Should Writers Teach and Should Teachers Write?

Here's an interesting question Harrison Scott Key raises in his Worldmag blog.

Those who can’t do, teach is the aphorism that makes MFAs and PhDs wince and get all defensive, and Those who write, teach is the title of this essay from the Times magazine about how that might be true for writers.

The operative question here is simply this: are writers less productive when they are also teachers? This is an important question for the literature of our nation and culture, given the fact that most writers are also teachers. And if it’s true that they don’t write as well when they teach, then maybe our national literature is suffering in some immeasurably destitute way.

It’s fine for writing teachers to talk in self-help jargon about how their lives require “balance” and “shifting gears” between teaching and writing, but below that civil language lurks the uncomfortable fact that the creation of literature requires a degree of monomania, and that it is, at least in part, an irrational enterprise. It’s hard to throw your whole self into something when that self has another job.

For five years, I have had a very mediocre creative writing PhD from a forgettable regional university. For 30 of those months, I have been a teacher, for the other 30 of those months, I have been something else, and throughout it all, I have been a writer. When it’s all said and done, I have to say that I’ve written better things as a non-teacher than a teacher. What does this mean? Nothing, other than the phrase “summers off” may not be as delightful as it sounds.